There are many things in the world that are harmful to one's health; but one of the largest and most problematic health issues in our society today is the smoking of cigarettes. Nevertheless, according to researchers, it is declared that smoking is the most harmful substance that could cause you to harm yourself and those around you. Smoking cigarettes is the leading cause of death in our country, due to its harmful and addicting contents, tobacco and nicotine. Cigarette smoke contains 4,000 other chemical constituents and more than 40 of them are known to cause cancer in humans. Tobacco companies market these little white agents of death freely throughout society and the media; using ads, putting them in movies and television, even placing them in local deli's. Never caring that their products cause horrible effects, not only to the people that use them but also the people that are around them also, they continue to spend millions into getting society hooked on their cancer sticks. If the tobacco companies continue to consciously market their products, it is only fair that they be held responsible for turning society into slaves, dependent on items that, which every pull, brings them closer to the brink of death and disease. Tobacco companies should be held accountable for the deaths and illnesses caused by the use of their products.

Smoking account for an estimated 443,000 deaths, or nearly one of every five deaths, each year in the United States, and nearly 5 million deaths worldwide. Cigarette related deaths total more than HIV, illegal drugs, alcohol abuse, motor vehicle related deaths, suicides and homicides combined. The causes of death can range from heart attack, stroke, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to various forms of cancer such as; lung cancer, cancers of the larynx and mouth, and pancreatic cancer. Contrary to what most people believe about the effects of tobacco, damage done to the body is not just limited to an addict's lungs....

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...Alec Usseglio
ENC 1101
Monica Vera
4 December 2011
Cigarettes Should be Made Illegal
Tobacco has been in America for nearly 8000 years. It started being cultivated and used for pleasure around 2000 years ago. (Cancer Council) People have been using it for a very long time. That means that the past 2000 years, it has been causing hundreds-of-thousands of deaths. Tobacco is widely known for its cancer-causing ways. The assumption could be made that people would stray away from it. The reality is that people constantly use tobacco products. In 2006, consumers spent $90 billion on tobacco products. (CDC) It’s baffling to know that an absurd amount of money like that is spent on something kills you.
Tobacco has been in the world for over 2.5 million years. It has been around longer than humans. It was found in a small block of fossilized tobacco in the Maranon river basin in northeastern Peru. It wasn’t until about 6000 BCE, that the tobacco plant started growing in the Americas. Then in 1 BCE, tobacco started being used in a variety of ways. It was used for smoking, chewing, and in hallucinogenic enemas (by the Peruvian Aguaruna aboriginals). (Borio)
In the seventeenth century, tobacco became a very popular crop. It was wanted everywhere around the world. In certain countries, it was strongly desired. In...

...Off With Their Head: TobaccoCompanies Know the Effects
“Government slowly suffocating these companies who are entitled to advertise and sell their legal ware”. Wait! Dr. Michael Kirsch offers up his support for the big tobaccocompanies, and in fact feels that consumers knew or should have known the effects of tobacco consumption. With mounting evidence over the years focused on the lies surroundingtobaccocompanies’ corporate practices, advertising game plans and falsification of nicotine content in their products, one may ask, how can anyone not find fault with tobaccocompanies. Considering the increasing death rate associated with tobacco consumption, and the falsification of facts regarding the risks associated with tobacco consumption, Dr. Kirsch presumably has a flawed perception of reality regarding the facts surrounding this perceived pandemic. Moreover, how logical is it to hear a medical doctor come to the defense of tobaccocompanies. In fact, I believe that heavier regulation of the “messages” sent to the public should be imposed, and give the consumers the truth behind what effects are associated with the consumption of “high risk habits”, such as tobacco consumption.
One of the major points made by Dr. Kirsch is that he feels tobacco...

...Tobacco
Every eight seconds, a human life is lost to tobacco use somewhere in the world. That translates to approximately 5 million deaths annually. Worldwide, approximately 10 million cigarettes are purchased a minute, 15 billion are sold each day, and upwards of 5 trillion are produced and used on an annual basis. There are 1.1 billion smokers in the world today, and if current trends continue, that number is expected to increase to 1.6 billion by the year 2025. This topic of tobacco is very important because tobacco is the number one cause of death. The main points that would be covered are why so many people use tobacco, why it harms the health of you and others around you, and the benefits to quitting smoking.
Tobacco was once popular in the American culture because it was once seen that only high-class people smoke. Today, teenagers to elderly people smoke tobacco. Worldwide, one in five teens age 13 to 15 smoke cigarettes. In an article Ptitled Youth Tobacco Prevention by the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) (CDC) it states, “More than 80% of adult smokers begin smoking before 18 years of age. Additionally, adolescent smokeless tobacco users are more likely than nonusers to become adult cigarette smokers.” Kids are still picking up smoking at the alarming rate of 3,000 a day in the U.S., and 80,000 to 100,000 a day worldwide....

...Tobacco products are products made entirely or partly of leaf tobacco as raw material, which are intended to be smoked, sucked, chewed or snuffed. All contain the highly addictive psychoactive ingredient, nicotine.
Tobacco use is one of the main risk factors for a number of chronic diseases, including cancer, lung diseases, and cardiovascular diseases. Despite this, it is common throughout the world. A number of countries have legislation restricting tobacco advertising, and regulating who can buy and use tobacco products, and where people can smoke.
Smoking in Childhood and Adolescence
The younger children start smoking, the more likely they will smoke as adults. Smoking is often rapidly addictive. According to the American Cancer Society, the earlier you start smoking, the more likely you are to develop long-term nicotine addiction.
In the past, advertising was responsible for encouraging some teens to smoke. New regulations have made it much more difficult for advertisers to promote smoking to young people. However, scenes that show people smoking, often in a positive light, are still common in movies and television shows. This may be a major influence on the attitude toward smoking in children and adolescents.
To prevent children from smoking, parents should not smoke, and they should tell their child that they disapprove of smoking. Studies have shown that schoolchildren who believed that...

...Contrary to popular social belief, it is NOT illegal to smoke tobacco products at any age. However, the SALE of tobacco products is highly regulated with legal legislation.
Demographics
Smokers by age
"Each day, approximately 6,000 young persons try their first cigarette and approximately 3,000 become daily smokers."
12.8 percent middle school students reported using some form of tobacco (cigarettes, smokeless, cigars, pipes) in the past month. Current cigarette use among middle school students was 9.2 percent. The rate of smoking among middle school students by race/ethnic groups was relatively equal.
More than one-third (34.8 percent) of high school students reported using some form of tobacco in the past month. More than a quarter (28.4 percent) of high school students were current cigarette smokers, with male and female students smoking at equal rates - 28.7 and 28.2 percent respectively. Current cigarette smoking prevalence use by race/ethnic groups was higher among Caucasian high school students, followed by Latino, and African American students.
Smokers by gender
Currently about 22 percent of women 18 years and older are smoking. The gap in smoking prevalence between men and women has narrowed dramatically in recent years. Although male smoking prevalence dropped 24 percentage points between 1965 and 1993, the prevalence of female smoking dropped only 11 percentage points during the same period....

...face of the "new" tobacco industry, they tell us, committed to public health and to America's children. They have finally come clean, they would have us believe, after half a century of targeting kids and deceiving the public about their products' dangers. Their social commitment extends well beyond the issue of smoking, they inform us. Each company devotes millions of dollars to a variety of causes, including feeding the hungry, aiding victims of natural disasters, and protecting women who are victims of abuse (of the nonsmoking kind). In 2000, industry behemoth Philip Morris, with domestic tobacco revenues of $23 billion, spent $115 million on such worthy endeavors--and then spent an additional $150 million on a national advertising campaign to inform the public about the company's largesse.States pay more than 17% of smoking-related health expenses through Medicaid programs. Investing in prevention, therefore, can result in long-term savings to states. Medicaid coverage to make smoking cessation affordable and accessible for the poor is crucial. Currently, 14 states offer no coverage at all. Comprehensive prevention and treatment plans will also save providers money in the long run. A study of health maintenance organization (HMO) expenses found former smokers' health care costs higher in their first year of quitting, but they are equivalent to those of continuing smokers in the second year, after which costs continue to drop....

...mechanisms, and factors of tobacco consumption on human health. Epidemiological research has been focused primarily on cigarette tobacco smoking,[1] which has been studied more extensively than any other form of consumption.[2]
Tobacco is the single greatest cause of preventable death globally.[3] Tobacco use leads most commonly to diseases affecting the heart, liver and lungs, with smoking being a major risk factor for heart attacks, strokes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (including emphysema and chronic bronchitis), and cancer (particularly lung cancer, cancers of the larynx and mouth, and pancreatic cancer). It also causes peripheral vascular disease and hypertension. The effects depend on the number of years that a person smokes and on how much the person smokes. Starting smoking earlier in life and smoking cigarettes higher in tar increases the risk of these diseases. Also, environmental tobacco smoke, or secondhand smoke, has been shown to cause adverse health effects in people of all ages.[4] Cigarettes sold in underdeveloped countries tend to have higher tar content, and are less likely to be filtered, potentially increasing vulnerability to tobacco-related disease in these regions.[5]
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that tobacco caused 5.4 million deaths in 2004[6] and 100 million deaths over the course of the 20th century.[7]...

...Thesis: Although Henry Wechsler and Froma Harrop condemn the issue of binge drinking among students and agree on its negative effects, they suggest different solutions to tackle it in different manner. However, Wechsler's article appears to me to be more convincing than Harrop's due to a variety of reliable evidence, his high standing in the academic community, and persuasive rhetoric, and the fact that Harrop's position does not fit my personal opinion.
Audience: Vesalius professors and students
Purpose: is to compare and contrast two articles: "Binge Drinking Must be Stopped" written by Henry Wechsler and "Child Care for Colleges Students" written by Froma Harrop to decide which is more convincing.
Reasons of using a particular organization
I structure the essay by using mix of block and point-to-point organization. In the point-to-point organization, I use one paragraph to highlight the similarities between the two texts due to the small number of points. Then, in the block organization, I demonstrate differences by using two paragraphs to analyze Wechsler's text and the next two ones for Harrop's text in the same order. This is because I would like to maintain the whole picture of each article while contrasting them.
Comparison and Contrast
Although Henry Wechsler and Froma Harrop condemn the issue of binge drinking among students and agree on its negative effects, they suggest different solutions to tackle it...